Assessing the impact of digital technology diffusion policies. Evidence from Italy

Abstract

This paper provides firm-level evidence on how subsidies to buyers of advanced digital production technologies work in sustaining private investments in innovation, and how such investments correlate with firms’ demand for labor. By exploiting the introduction in 2017 of a fiscal incentive granted to all Italian companies purchasing tangible goods instrumental to their digital transformation, we are able to quantify the volume of the subsidized investments within the national economy, to correlate the decision to invest with ex-ante structural and strategic characteristics of the beneficiary firms, and to evaluate the labor market effects (hirings and separations) of these investments at the firm level, for different classes of workers and firms. Overall, the analysis suggests that the policy has been so far an effective means to support the advanced digital technology transformation of the Italian production system and that such transformation has been positively correlated with employment growth at investing firms.

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